Mark Twain, Great American Author — The Enchanted Archives

Slavery played a critical role in Sam’s early life. At various points during his childhood, his parents owned and temporarily hired the labor of black men and women named Jennie, Uncle Ned, Sandy, and Charlie. Sam witnessed townspeople beating runaway slaves and threatening abolitionists with lynching. These elements of Sam’s upbringing—slavery, the Mississippi River, shenanigans with his peers, and the unique character of southern life and culture—had a deep, lasting impact on him and provided the framework for The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), and The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894). is early years also explain why his name is emblazoned on the riverboat at Disneyland.

As a young adult, Sam Clemens pursued many different careers and began to make a name for himself as a writer. Sam’s foray into the literary world began when he apprenticed for a local newspaper in 1848. Over the next decade, he worked as a printer and journalist in St. Louis, New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. He then decided to embark on his childhood dream of earning a riverboat pilot license. In 1858 he paid Horace E. Bixby $500 to teach him how to “read” the depths, banks, and reefs of the Mississippi River between St. Louis and New Orleans. Piloting was a dangerous job in those days, though! Obstacles like detached trees threatened to puncture the boat’s hull, and boiler explosions killed hundreds of riverboat passengers, including Sam’s own brother, Henry. Sam worked on the river until the Civil War broke out in 1861. He lasted for two weeks as a Confederate soldier before heading west with his brother, Orion, who had been appointed Secretary of the Nevada Territory. After 19 days in a stagecoach, they reached Carson City, a booming mining town. Over the course of the 1860s, Sam failed as a miner on the Comstock Lode, ran from a pack of hungry wolves, published a story in the Saturday Press that made him famous, traveled to Hawaii (known then as the Sandwich Islands), went on a transatlantic cruise to Europe and the Middle East, and began earning as much as $100 for each public appearance. He also signed his first story with his pen name, “Mark Twain,” a steamboat term that meant the river was at a safe depth for passage. Twain wrote Innocents Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), and Life on the Mississippi (1883) about his travels, although he personally did not care for the discomfort and inconvenience of being away from home. Click here for a useful timeline of Twain’s life.